Door installation and repair in Uxbridge

18-gauge face sheets are the commercial standard, with 16-gauge used where traffic or abuse is heavy and 20-gauge limited to light interior duty. Frames run the other way: 16-gauge is the usual interior frame and 14-gauge the exterior and heavy-duty one. Lower number, thicker steel. The ANSI/SDI A250.8 levels are the shorthand the trade uses — Level 1 through Level 4, standard duty to maximum duty.

Four things, and they have to work together. It gives the full barrier-free clear width. It can be locked from inside by someone with limited hand strength, and that lock can be released from outside in an emergency. It opens under power from both sides, so a person in a chair does not have to pull it. And it must not trap anybody — which is why these doors swing outward or slide rather than opening inward onto the floor space where a person could have fallen.

A door that drags at the latch corner is almost never a door problem. In order of likelihood: the hinges are worn or their screws have pulled out of the frame reinforcement, the frame itself has been pushed out of square (usually by an impact or by a wall that has moved), or the door has been hung on hardware too light for its weight and cycle count. Packing the hinges is a temporary fix that buys weeks; the durable repair is new hinges into sound reinforcement, or the frame straightened or replaced. On a fire door it is not optional — a leaf that does not latch on its own is a deficiency.

It depends on the size, stile width, glazing, finish, hardware and whether the frame is thermally broken — a single narrow-stile door is a very different number from a pair with sidelites, panic hardware and low-E glass. Rather than quote a misleading “from” price, we measure the opening and give you a firm, itemised quote at no charge.

Treat it as one if the opening is no longer secure, no longer weathertight, or has glass left in the frame that can still fall. A cracked pane that is intact and above head height can usually wait for a scheduled visit; a shattered storefront at street level cannot, and neither can a fire exit whose glass is gone. The test we use on the phone is simple: can the building be locked and left tonight? If not, it is an emergency and we board it up.

Traditional wired glass is largely gone from new work. It passes the fire test but fails the impact requirement that now applies to hazardous locations, so new vision lites are typically fire-rated ceramic or specialty-glass products, filmed or laminated to meet impact as well. Wired glass already installed in an existing fire-rated door is generally allowed to remain until the door or the glazing is altered.